


Fixing King Fred

by unwillingadventurer



Category: Original Work
Genre: Drama, Family, Friendship, Mystery, Victorian, working-class life
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-02
Updated: 2021-03-02
Packaged: 2021-03-15 10:07:40
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,362
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29806806
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/unwillingadventurer/pseuds/unwillingadventurer
Summary: In the week of Queen Victoria's golden jubilee, the mysterious drifter 'King Fred' comes into the life of Sam Skitt and his family.
Comments: 2
Kudos: 1





	Fixing King Fred

The first thing I noticed about Fred was his shoes. Shoes were the first thing I noticed about everyone. Even my wife Lucy’s shoes made the first impression and were noticed before her beautiful smile and masses of unruly curls. As a cobbler by trade, I’d learnt all about shoes from a young age and they were essential to every part of my life. My father taught me, his father taught him and now, without a son of my own, I was teaching my daughter to follow in my…well…footsteps.

Fred’s shoes were practically falling apart but then again so was Fred himself. At this point in the story, I didn’t know who Fred was, I’d never seen him before— he was just a drifter by the side of the road, sprawled out on the cobbles, either horribly drunk or in pain. Maybe even both. My daughter Dolly had called us outside one afternoon, screaming that she’d seen a man on the side of the pathway, struggling to move.

“Pa! Ma!” She had called, running into the house, stomping in her heavy boots, her dress covered in mud and dirt. She was one of those ten-year-olds who liked to play in the street and climb trees, running about and playing with the other children in the road. She was still at school but she didn’t much like the academic side of things and preferred to do things with her hands and play the day away.

But I digress. It was June of 1897 when we first met Fred outside the workshop of my family business ‘Skitt’s Shoe Menders’. We always remembered the time we first saw him because it was the same week of Queen Victoria’s golden jubilee, and my wife and I would joke that ‘King Fred’ had been crowned by us from that day forward.

Fred didn’t look anything like a king of course. He was shabby, dirty, and terribly thin. His beard was unruly and long and he stunk of the streets. He had blood-shot eyes and blemished skin. It was clear that this man had been through troubled days. Lucy was the one who could see sadness in his eyes, whereas I saw his suffering in those awful worn-out shoes he was wearing with one toe protruding from the end.

“Excuse me?” I called out to him as he lay on the ground in a heap. His eyes looked up as the three of us stood over him. But back a few paces there was a crowd of children forming, keen to observe the stranger as though he were part of a grand show. To them he was an exciting part of the day, different than the last day or the one which would follow.

There was a gruff sort of grumble and then a series of coughs before he sat up and winced in pain. 

“My poor dear man,” Lucy said, leaning down to him and grabbing his hand. “Sam, help me get him inside, he’s hurt his leg.”

“I wouldn’t want to be any trouble,” the man replied in a whisper, his voice hoarse and reluctant like he hadn’t spoken in years. There was also a strange mix of accents in that one sentence.

“It’s no bother,” I replied, grabbing his arm and placing it around my shoulder as I hoisted him up.

By now my mother and father who lived with us above the workshop, were standing by the doorway. It didn’t take long for Ma to shoot inside and fetch some hot water and for Pa to tut and curse as this shabby stranger was brought inside to the Skitt family home.

“Another drunkard,” he said aside to me. “He’s filthy.”

“So are you, Pa, but we don’t throw you out.”

“’Eck, you’re not too old for a clip ‘round the ear, Sam m’ boy,” he said with a smirk and then just that, a clip around the ear, followed by another clip around the ear from mother for talking back to my father. I was thirty-nine years of age but they treated me like a boy who was wet behind the ears.

“We’re just helping a poor lost soul,” Lucy said to my father as we ushered him inside and left him with Dolly whilst we helped Ma with the water.

“A sole in need of repair,” I joked, nudging her until she too was laughing.

“Oh Samuel!” She slapped me playfully. “I do love you but your shoe puns are tiresome.”

“Then why did you laugh?”

“Pa, Ma,” Dolly said, entering the kitchen. She had a smug grin painted on her face. “His name’s Fred.”

“How do you know that?” I asked.

“He told me. He said: ‘I’m Fred.’”

And that’s how we first met Fred.

…

Hours later on that June day when Lucy had cleaned Fred up and we had tended to his wound which was a large cut on his shin. We sat him in front of the fire where he sat in my father’s armchair, sipping some soup from a bowl. My father stood by the fireside, huffing and hissing at the sight of someone in his precious seat and flames ablaze in the month of June. 

“That fire’s not cheap to have lit you know? We’re not made of money,” he said, folding his arms. “It’s bloody stupid to have it on this time of year.”

“Fred’s freezing,” Lucy said. “He’s hurt, probably caught a chill. He was out all night. Let him stay, just for a little while.”

“What is he, the flipping king?”

“Language in front of Dolly, Pa!” I said, placing my hands over her ears even though he’d already said it. And frankly she’d heard far worse from him over the years.

“I’m dreadfully sorry for the intrusion,” Fred said quietly. His accent was mixed again and his voice had a gentle tone with a charm and sophistication to it. He also sat upright, regally, very much the king on the throne as father had rudely dubbed him. There was definitely something interesting about the man with the broken shoes.

Dolly laughed, finding a positive in Pa’s insult. “King Fred, I like that!”

There was a trace of a smile from Fred but he revealed little to us in that day about where he’d come from, where he’d lived, where he was travelling to or how he’d injured himself. He was congenial and polite but hardly forthcoming with information.

I began to mend the pair of shoes for him in my workshop as he sat there with bare feet now clean after the foot scrub offered by Lucy. During the repair he said little and mostly gave awkward glances in my direction.

“I really don’t deserve these kindnesses,” he whispered softly.

“Don’t be daft,” I replied. “Everyone needs shoes, Fred. The Queen needs shoes and the beggar needs shoes. Some are more fancy than others but deep down to our ‘soles’, Fred, we’re all the same.”

He smiled, ignoring my terrible show pun, and then coughed ferociously revealing a cough that could rival my father’s.

“Nasty that, Fred.”

“It’s nothing. Lingering cold.”

Not pleased with the sound of his cough, I was instead rather pleased with King Fred’s shoes, mended by my own hand. I gazed at them for a moment before offering them to our mysterious stranger. He seemed reluctant at first and then his eyes were alight with child-like wonder as though I had given him a golden jubilee coin rather than his mended shoes. But the way he looked at them, it almost seemed that to him they were gold coins, that they were worth to him more than anything in the world at that moment.

Lucy too stood admiring the shoes that now rested on the man’s tired feet. “Well, Fred, shoes are complete, how’s about a warm meal? We’ve supper soon.”

“I couldn’t possibly impose on you any longer. I must be on my way.”

He attempted to stand but wobbled and winced in pain again.

“You can’t go out in that state,” I said. “Please stay here until you can at least get back on your feet. It’s a crowded house but you can kip in the workshop if you like?”

Lucy agreed, Dolly was pleased, mother was sceptical, and father was livid. But in that workshop, Fred slept at first for two nights, then a week— and as though it were nothing— suddenly two whole years had passed.

…

Two years seem like a long time to most people but in those days, weeks and months, King Fred as we affectionately called him was still almost as much a mystery to us as he was on that lonely road, on that first day we met him— the man with the broken shoes.

Against my father’s protestations, Fred kipped in the workshop on a makeshift bed. He ate his meals with us, he swept up, tidied and mended things where he could. He did all the jobs that I would have thought beneath him judging by his air of sophistication but he did all that and never accepted money unless where needed. All he seemed to want was a roof over his head and to do his bit in the workshop.

Not having the heart to throw this poor man out into the world, Lucy and I had agreed to put him to good use—teaching him the basics of the trade and we’d become fond of the quiet, gentle-spoken stranger the way someone becomes fond of a bird that sings outside their window every morning and would be sad if it would sing a tune no more. We’d grown accustomed to Fred.

And on that night, exactly two years after King Fred had arrived, Lucy and I retired to our own room where Fred was now the topic of conversation.

“Two whole years,” I said, thinking to myself how before him nothing seemed to change day to day but since he’d been here there’d been a cloud of mystery over us, a problem to solve. Time had passed so quickly but life always did when you worked long hours with barely time to breathe or play. One moment Dolly was a child at school, the next she was twelve and school was gone. Fred was an injured man at the door and in the blink of an eye was a colleague.

Lucy placed down her book and yawned. “Can’t keep my eyes open or read a word. So tired. But I’ve been thinking.”

“Oh uh. What have I done?”

“Why do you always assume you’ve done something?” Her eyebrow rose. “Have you done something, Samuel Stephen Skitt?”

“What could I have done?”

“But have you?”

“Have I what?” I crossed my fingers over my heart.

“Come here you daft beggar! I was just gonna say that as it’s two years since Fred joined us, maybe we should be brave and confront him.”

I sat down on the bed next to her and she began to massage my shoulders and ease the tension away. Long hours mending things meant my joints always ached.

“You make it sound like he’s done something wrong.”

“That’s just it, we don’t know anything. You know how fond I am of him but he’s running away from something. We don’t even know where he lived or if he has family. Or what is job was. We only learned his surname was Porter a few months ago.”

“True. As for the job we know he was a travelling performer which explains the accents and all those wonderful impressions.”

“But why did he stay here? He could’ve moved on at any time once his leg had healed. If he was a performer, why would he want to stay here with a cobbler and his family?”

“Perhaps he likes us all. Perhaps he likes my jokes.”

“Perhaps he’s mad in that case!”

We both laughed and I tickled her under the ribs knowing she was sensitive there. Whenever I was under attack from Lucy, tickling was the only answer.

“But you’re right,” I said, “I’m curious as hell as to who he is but trouble is, he might not want to tell us and I don’t want to force the poor man.”

“Gawd no! He’s a good worker. If he’s happy to stay then I’m happy for him to keep at it. But I do wish he’d take full wages and he seems so scruffy most days and he could do with a day off now and then.”

“He’ll refuse. And a day off, what’s that?”

…

We spied Fred the next morning, up at the crack of dawn as usual, sweeping the workshop floor in somewhat mechanical fashion. We watched him through the glass on the door for several moments, taking in everything about him. His full beard, moustache and long hair always seemed to cover large areas of his face making it difficult to read him and sometimes I wondered whether that was exactly the point.

“Fred!” I said cheerily as we entered the room and made ourselves heard.

He smiled. “Sam, Lucy, good morning. Did you hear the sound of birds outside? It was most pleasant.”

He was like that, King Fred. Everything to him was like poetry or art. A sunrise was a miracle. Footsteps in snow were like angels stepping through heaven’s land. Even a discarded coin was interesting to him and he would imagine who had held it in their palm. He would speak at length about the man he pictured holding it but had only spoken mere sentences about the man he was himself.

Lucy, my parents and Dolly each had their own theories to who the mysterious King Fred was: father thought him a vile murderer and mother thought him a rather polite petty crook. Dolly considered him a spy whereas Lucy was adamant he was a man fallen from grace or on hard times. And me, well, I hadn’t made my mind up yet. I found it hard to see Fred as anything but the quiet, charming, hard-worker that had lived and aided for us for two years.

“Fred?” Lucy began, taking a deep breath. “Tell me to shut up if you like but… you’ve done so much for us.”

“No, you’ve done so much for me, Lucy.”

“Yes, but Sam and I were talking and well, we’re friends, aren’t we? And we wondered if you’d ever like to talk about yourself, about your life aside from the entertainment like?”

He placed down his broom and I watched him closely. His face was blank, showing no anger or upset, simply nothing. He then coughed, picked up his broom and resumed sweeping again, the same spot over and over as if something had worried him about Lucy’s curiosity.

“I never like to hog the limelight,” he said quietly.

“What about when you were entertaining people on your travels?” I asked. “You love telling stories of all that.” I was reminded he very much liked the limelight in that regard.

He looked up at me and I swore I saw a tear in his eye.

“I’m not myself then, Sam, I’m playing a part.”

But I wondered whether it was now he was playing the part and we somehow were his audience every evening at supper.

“If you don’t want to share, we won’t make you,” Lucy added, “but we hope you feel comfortable to talk to us if you ever need help or need friends to confide in.”

“Thank you, Lucy.” And he said nothing more, instead got back to his job, greeting a customer as they came through the door.

Where he’d been silent during the work day, he always found his voice at dinner. He was like that, only coming alive from his shyness whenever he spoke about the people he met whilst he was a travelling performer. Why he’d given it up, we’d yet to know, but what we did know was that if you started him off on a subject such as his performing life then it was hard to shut him up.

Dolly helped her mother serve dinner that evening and we all listened in excitement as he continued his story from the previous night about someone he’d met at a circus in Brighton, a man who could juggle many balls, breathe fire, and who had eventually lost an arm to a lion. Fred would tell it in such detail and flair that we would be on the edges of our seats. It became a nightly ritual and as we learnt more and more of this eccentric world of artistes, I wondered if he was steering us further and further away from the ordinary life he may have left behind.

“Tell us more!” Dolly would cry after every evening tea and I suppose I did feel a little jealous that she thought so highly of him and would rather listen to his stories than mine. I was only a cobbler. I couldn’t breathe fire like a dragon or tell stories of daring adventures— all I could do was work and provide for my family and live day to day like any man can. Maybe that’s why I was so interested in Fred. He represented this fantasy and mystery to life to mirror my conventionality, my routine, my normality. To me, a finished shoe was a highlight of my day, brought joy to me in a difficult world but to Fred it was probably just a shoe, an item. But he was so unconventional and had all these stories. Why was he still here? Why wasn’t he out in that strange and odd world, embracing all it had to offer?

“Who else was at the circus, Fred?” Mother had asked, her scepticism of him no less made her curious of his tales.

Father sat in the background, tutting as he lit another cigarette and watching as the room was filled with a haze of smoke.

“Well, Mrs. Skitt,” Fred said, “there was a beautiful trapeze artist with long jet-black hair, and Siamese twins and a very funny clown.”

“I would love to see the circus,” Dolly said, looking at me with pleading eyes. The circus was something I’d never considered visiting. Day trips were a rarity and I tended not to want to spoil her.

“You’d really love it Esther,” he replied.

We all stopped what we were doing and looked at him. I felt Lucy squeeze my knee under the table. But Fred suddenly looked nervous and coughed again. Had he really called her Esther?

“Sorry, you’d like the circus…Dolly,” he corrected himself.

In two years, he’d never called her Esther before. And then like it’d never been uttered at all, he started to tell Dolly about the kinds of acts you get at circuses and what kind of life you lead. His mistake with the name was ignored. It ran around my mind for a bit however, wondering if Esther was not just a slip of the tongue but his way of revealing just a small something whether he intended to or not. 

…

Before bed, I sat with him in the living quarters whilst the rest of the household turned in for the night. Only a single candle lit the room which shadowed his face and made him appear even more un-readable like a confusing book with far too many words. A million stories of million people on the pages of his life story but so far not one page about him.

“You going up?” he asked.

“In a minute.”

“Your Dolly’s a bright girl. Very adventurous too. You must be proud.”

“Course. She wants to go into the shoe business like her old man. Well at least I think she does, it might be the circus now.”

“I hope I wasn’t out of line telling her the tales of circus life?”

“Nah, course not. Dolly’s her own life to lead when she’s old enough. I want her to follow my footsteps but only if she’s really keen. Life’s hard for us and especially for girls. Not many options for her see. But in case the circus doesn’t work or any other thing she sets her heart on, or in case she never marries, I know she’ll have a job here for all her days. As long as we can keep the business afloat of course.”

“People always need shoes,” Fred said with the hint of a smile.

“That they do. Essential business we are. Us and the undertakers.”

“I’d like to learn the trade more,” he replied, caressing his cup of tea. “I was wondering if you’d care to teach me proper?”

“We can talk about that. Can I ask you something?”

“Yes.”

“Why did you give up performing?”

“Too old for it.”

I laughed. “How old are you?”

“Forty-four.”

“Only a few years older than me! Surely you’re not saying I’d be too old to juggle and walk a tight rope?”

He grinned. “I’m not sure about you in tights.”

“I have great legs, just ask Lucy!”

“But you’re right. I’m not too old for it physically but in my mind and heart I am. I’ve been wandering for a while and these last two years have been some of the happiest ones. I have a roof over my head. I have honest work, stability. I have people what care.”

I was surprised by this sudden offering of information and knew that Lucy would be envious that he’d opened up to me instead of her.

“I’d be happy to teach you more. It takes many years to learn the craft but it’s worth it,” I said. “I’ve needed someone else around the place and before you came it was just me, Pa and Lucy helping but Pa’s not been well.”

“Will he be alright?”

“It’s his lungs.”

“He doesn’t like me.”

“He finds it hard to like anyone. He doesn’t even like Ma that much.”

“You’re very different. How a father and son can be so disparate. How nature can contrast one another. It’s all so very interesting.”

“And are you like your father, Fred?”

His body tensed as soon as I had asked the question. “Queen Elizabeth the 1st couldn’t have gotten on with hers. He lopped off her mother’s head.”

“And what about King Fred?”

“Let’s just say my father never chopped off any heads and nor have I.”

“I’m bloody glad to hear it! If you want a proper job here, the first thing we specify is ‘no axe murderers.’”

We both laughed and it was lovely to be able to share a joke with the man. We’d not had many opportunities to talk just we two.

“Your father no doubt thinks I’m a murderer,” he said.

I pretended I didn’t know what my father thought of him. “Nah, that’s just his way. Suspicious of everyone.”

“He looks at me like he fears me. I shouldn’t wish to be in a house where they fear me for being different.”

“He’s alright. He’s coming ‘round to you. Besides, he can’t be right, can he? If you were gonna murder us all why would you wait two years?”

He smiled and I’d never realised before how nice his teeth were considering the state we’d found him in. “Well, I’ve got to learn to fix the shoes first!”

…

“Lucy, stop being silly.”

She folded her arms and turned her head away from me as she reclined on the bed, huffing.

“I’m sorry he opened up to me first. But he’s a man, perhaps he felt he could talk to another male.”

“But I’m the approachable one.”

“But not so modest! And he didn’t approach me, Luce. It was just a conversation. Perhaps a more relaxed setting helped.”

“Perhaps he couldn’t talk to me because he’s sweet on me.” 

I took off my shoes and sat upon the bed. “Don’t be daft. You say that about every man who comes to call.”

“Well one day it’ll be true. You fancied me after all.”

I laughed. “I had sight issues back then, Luce!”

She groaned, hit me playfully and then began to wrestle me atop the covers. I was pinned down and my only escape, my only weapon was I had the upper-hand at tickling. She surrendered soon after and made her way to the window, glancing out at the night sky and shivering in the cold of the room. I approached her and wrapped my arms around her to keep her warm.

“I’m going to find out about him, Sam,” she said.

“I doubt he’ll tell you more than he told me.”

“I’m not going to ask him. I’m going to investigate. I suppose it might take years.”

“Years! It’ll take centuries. When do we have time to play detectives?”

She smirked. “Haven’t you heard we’ve got a new trainee cobbler? They’re usually sixteen but this one’s middle-aged! With him working more, we’ll have a chance to get down to business.”

…

It was a merry sight the next day when during training, I glimpsed Dolly sitting upon Fred’s knee as he practised mending a shoe, placing the tack into his mouth, resting it between his teeth, ready for hammering. Dolly was only a slip of a girl, always had been, had looked like a little doll since the day she was born with rosy cheeks, pale skin and her mother’s curls. In fact, her Christian name was Mary but she’d always been Dolly to us. Just as Fred was King Fred, Mary was Dolly.

“You two alright?” I looked at Fred as he placed the shoe upon the hobbing foot.

“We’re well, thank you, Sam.”

“Dolly, you’re far too old to be sitting on his knees, you’ll crush him!”

“Sorry Pa,” she said, climbing down. “Fred was showing me what he’d learnt.”

I grabbed her playfully. “And I suppose your pa has failed to do so himself these years?”

“No. But when King Fred teaches me, I can hear stories of when he used to sing and dance for money by the docks. He had a partner at one point who was blind but played the accordion like a professional.”

“Really? You do meet interesting people, Fred. Dolly, go and help your mother with the lunch.”

I’d come to realise that Dolly managed to unravel more information about Fred than anyone and if Lucy wanted a spy, our own daughter was our best bet.

Dolly skipped away happily and I placed on my apron and my work spectacles and glanced at the roster for the day’s work. We had a busy week, some new customers, and a grand pair of ladies boots that needed fine craftsmanship to get them back to their best. They’d been brought into the shop by her ladies’ maid and were easily the most expensive shoes I’d ever repaired. Why they came to us I had no idea. Usually, our clients were modest and humble folk and I doubted the other classes even knew of our little shop’s existence in the backstreets of a seaside town which for winter was quiet and forgotten but by summer thriving and alive. It was the beginning of summer now and ready for the re-awakening.

“You get along with Dolly, don’t you?” I asked Fred. 

“She’s a polite and happy child.”

“I admit I spoil her but we thought we couldn’t have children. Lucy lost two before her and we never managed afterwards. She was like a little miracle child but don’t tell her that, her head’s already too big.”

“I’m sorry to hear of your sorrows.”

“Did you ever want a wife or children or anything like that?” I tried to broach it carefully but he just stared down at his work, not really replying and instead acting as though the shoe took precedence. 

“I’m sorry,” I said. “Shouldn’t pry. A man’s personal business is a man’s personal business. Pa always says that me and Lucy are too nosey for our own good.”

He smiled. “You’re interested in people, nowt wrong with that.”

I’d never heard him use the word ‘nowt’ before and I wondered if he’d ever spent time up north or whether it was just a slip into his many accents or speech patterns he’d picked up on his trips around the country. He usually spoke so refined with such tremendous diction and clarity that whenever he threw in a ‘nowt’ or a bit of cockney rhyming slang, I was flummoxed.

I really was none the wiser to his origins. He had such a regal kingly air that I imagined that he was wealthy, but he also had such a side of the ordinary man, that even a million adventures and fantasies could not disguise. He had all the traits of a working man, humble, efficient and full of the scars of the daily grind. He was proving to be even more mysterious the more he spoke, hinting at parts of his life and his past but throwing around more questions than answers.

When the ladies’ maid returned to collect her mistress’s boots, I saw her looking at Fred in a curious manner. Indeed, he was immediately interesting, and I suppose there was a handsomeness under the unruly exterior but it was more than that. She was examining him as though a spy. All the time Lucy was taking her payment, the woman was looking at Fred. At first Fred was oblivious, caught in his own daydream. A few times he’d failed to do his task and I heard him grumble as the hammer made contact with his thumb rather than the shoe. But when he was engrossed in his work, hardly anything would snap him out of it.

Finally, he looked up and his eyes met the woman’s and I watched as they just stared at each other for several moments. Fred’s eyes were the first to look away and he got up abruptly and made his excuses to leave. It was so unlike him to leave his work.

Lucy and I exchanged glances as the woman also scurried from the shop. 

“What was that about?” Lucy asked, watching from the window as the woman looked back several times before climbing into a carriage.

“Don’t know but it put the wind up Fred, didn’t it?”

“Don’t suppose she was an old flame or something?”

“Could be. It might explain his ways if he’d been in some fancy household. He could’ve picked up airs and graces there. Perhaps he was a tidy and fastidious butler.”

We both laughed. He was grand but a mere butler? It didn’t seem so likely. He was even grander than that our King Fred.

“You do think his stories about the circus and stuff are true, don’t you?” I asked.

“I told you I intend to find out, Sam.”

“And how, my love, do you intend to find out, your feminine wiles?”

“I have none of those.”

I laughed. “Yeah, you really don’t.”

She slapped me on the arm. “But I do have a brain.”

I felt around the top of her head. “Do you? Hard to tell under all those curls.”

She took my hand away. “I have a bigger brain than you and I’ll use it to help him.”

“He might not need help. He might just want peace and quiet.”

“He’s broken in some way, Sam. And it’s our job to fix him.”

“Luce, it’s our job to fix shoes. It’s your job to fix dinner and Ma’s to tidy and Pa’s to moan and Dolly’s to play. It’s not our duty to fix someone as much as we care for them.”

“He’s a lost soul, Sam.”

I resisted the temptation to utter the shoe pun. “Alright but if he doesn’t want helping then we stop and we leave him alone. We find out for ourselves and then we just forget it.”

“Deal.”

“So, Inspector Lucy Skitt of Scotland Yard, where do we start?”

She pulled out a poster from behind the counter and rolled it out across the table. “Didn’t I tell you? The circus is coming to town!”


End file.
